The ACLU is suing the Obama administration under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), seeking to force disclosure of the guidelines used by Obama officials to select which human beings (both U.S. citizens and foreign nationals) will have their lives ended by the CIA’s drone attacks (“In particular,” the group explains, the FOIA request “seeks to find out when, where and against whom drone strikes can be authorized, and how the United States ensures compliance with international laws relating to extrajudicial killing”). The Obama administration has not only refused to provide any of that information, but worse, the CIA is insisting to federal courts that it cannot even confirm or deny the existence of a drone program at all without seriously damaging national security; from the CIA’s brief in response to the ACLU lawsuit:

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(click on image to enlarge)

What makes this so appalling is not merely that the Obama administration demands the right to kill whomever it wants without having to account to anyone for its actions, choices or even claimed legal authorities, though that’s obviously bad enough (as I wrote when the ACLU lawsuit was commenced: “from a certain perspective, there’s really only one point worth making about all of this: if you think about it, it is warped beyond belief that the ACLU has to sue the U.S. Government in order to force it to disclose its claimed legal and factual bases for assassinating U.S. citizens without charges, trial or due process of any kind”). What makes it so much worse is how blatantly, insultingly false is its claim that it cannot confirm or deny the CIA drone program without damaging national security.

On September 11, 2001, within hours of the murderous 9/11 attacks, Bush, Rumsfeld, and Cheney had committed America to what they later called the “War on Terror.” It should more properly, I believe, be called the “Terror War,” one in which terror has been directed repeatedly against civilians by all participants, both states and non-state actors.1 It should also be seen as part of a larger, indeed global, process in which terror has been used against civilians in interrelated campaigns by all major powers, including China in Xinjiang and Russia in Chechnya, as well as the United States.2 Terror war in its global context should perhaps be seen as the latest stage of the age-long secular spread of transurban civilization into areas of mostly rural resistance — areas where conventional forms of warfare, for either geographic or cultural reasons, prove inconclusive.

Terror War was formally declared by George W. Bush on the evening of September 11, 2001, with his statement to the American nation that “we will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”3 But the notion that Bush’s terror war was in pursuit of actual terrorists lost credibility in 2003, when it was applied to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, a country known to have been targeted by terrorists but not to have harbored them.4 It lost still more credibility with the 2005 publication in Britain of the so-called Downing Street memo, in which the head of the British intelligence service MI6 reported after a visit to Washington in 2002 that “Bush wanted to remove Saddam Hussein, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”5 False stories followed in due course linking Iraq to WMD, anthrax, and Niger yellowcake (uranium).

This essay will demonstrate that before 9/11 a small element inside the CIA’s Bin Laden Unit and related agencies, the so-called Alec Station Group, were also busy, “fixing” intelligence by suppressing it, in a way which, accidentally or deliberately, enabled the Terror War. They did so by withholding evidence from the FBI before 9/11 about two of the eventual alleged hijackers on 9/11, Khalid Al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, thus ensuring that the FBI could not surveil the two men or their colleagues.

This failure to share was recognized in the 9/11 Commission Report, but treated as an accident that might not have occurred “if more resources had been applied.”6 This explanation, however, has since been refuted by 9/11 Commission Chairman Tom Kean. Asked recently by two filmmakers if the failure to deal appropriately with al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi could have been a simple mistake, Kean replied:

Oh, it wasn’t careless oversight. It was purposeful. No question about that .… The conclusion that we came to was that in the DNA of these organizations was secrecy. And secrecy to the point of ya don’t share it with anybody.7

Detailed investigation reveals unexpected connections among people who played critical roles related to the attacks of September 11, 2001. Earlier articles have covered some of those connections with respect to the World Trade Center (WTC) and the official reports which were produced to explain the WTC events.[1] This article will begin to outline a wider set of connections that encompasses more aspects of 9/11. Readers may find that, with respect to the 9/11 attacks and those who were responsible for protecting us from terrorism, it is a small world after all.

Barry McDaniel came to the WTC security company Stratesec, in 1998, to become its Chief Operating Officer. In the years before 9/11, Stratesec had contracts to provide security services not only for the WTC, but also for United Airlines, which owned two of the planes hijacked on 9/11, and Dulles Airport, where American Airlines Flight 77 took off that day.

At the WTC, McDaniel was in charge of the security operation in terms of what he called a “completion contract,” to provide services “up to the day the buildings fell down.”[2] McDaniel came to Stratesec directly from BDM International, where he had been Vice President for nine years. BDM was a major subsidiary of The Carlyle Group for most of that time. When Barry McDaniel started at BDM, the company began getting a large amount of government business “in an area the Navy called Black Projects,” or budgets that were kept secret.[3]

“Do the orders still stand?” — Military aide to Vice President Navy Capt. Douglas Cochrane

Was there a stand down on 9-11? In a sense yes, but there is no evidence that a stand down order was issued. There would be no reason for VP Cheney to issue a stand down order, since he issuing a shoot down order, would have the same effect. I will proceed to show this as a fact along with the disturbing fact that the President of the United States, and the Secretary of Defense, both deserted their posts in a time of war. These two individuals who are the only ones authorized to issue shoot down orders of civilian aircraft, created the stand down, by deserting their posts, and then further disgraced themselves, and their offices, by lying to the American people.

Capt. Douglas Cochrane(Navy) – Military aide to Dick Cheney “Cochrane was selected to serve as the Naval Aide to the Vice President in Nov. of 2000 and served Vice President Richard B. Cheney until Dec. 2002.” “He was commended by President George W. Bush for actions as Naval Aide and Vice Presidential Emergency Action Officer, on and about Sept. 11, 2001.” http://mayportmirror.jacksonville.com/military/mayport-mirror/2010-10-27…

Vice Admiral Edmund Giambastiani (Navy)– Military Aide to Donald Rumsfeld “Special Assistant to the Deputy Director for Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency – He also serves on the Board of Trustees of the Mitre Corporation.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Giambastiani

Before President Bush stepped into the classroom he was already told a commercial airliner had flown into the WTC. He was told this by Rice. This is confirmed in his own book, by Rice, and the 9-11 commission released notes.

“Then Condi called. I spoke to her from a secure phone in a classroom that had been converted into a communications center for the traveling White House staff. She told me the plane that had just struck the Trade Center tower was not a light aircraft. It was a commercial jetliner.” “I was stunned. That plane must have had the worst pilot in the world.” Page 126 http://www.amazon.com/Decision-Points-George-W-Bush/dp/0307590615#reader…

News of the Saudi Crown Prince passing in the U.S. and his new successor to the post warrant a refresher on the attempts to name them in 9/11 lawsuits years ago.

ONE BIG FAMILY

Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, the Crown Prince to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, died just a weeks ago in a New York hospital due to ill health. The world’s largest oil-exporting nation has quickly found an heir to the Crown Prince, a position directly under the most powerful of the King. The new Crown Prince has been named as Nayef bin Abdul Aziz, brother of the deceased Crown Prince Sultan. Both were half-brothers to the current King of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah, and both are a part of the powerful Sudairi Seven.

The recently deceased Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz

The old Crown Prince Sultan is the father of Prince Bandar. Bandar is known to many in the world as “Bandar Bush” for his extremely close relationship with the Bush family. Bandar served as the Ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the U.S. from 1983 until 2005. The Royal family’s relationship with the Bush family goes back even further.

"Bandar Bush" and Condoleezza Rice join the Saudi King and Bush at Bush's Texas property.

Prince Bandar has a history of involvement in scandals, undoubtebly we only know so much. A biography of Prince Bandar was written by William Simpson and praised by many, including Nelson Mandela and Margaret Thatcher. The website for the book contains a brief description of Prince Bandar:

Prince Bandar worked with CIA Director Bill Casey to fund covert CIA operations with Saudi petrodollars. He played a key role in the Iran-Contra affair…

Digging into Iran-Contra and Prince Bandar, an article from Surrendering Islam sums it up well:

The CIA’s backing of the Mujahideen war in Afghanistan would become its largest covert operation in history, funded by an intricate series of clandestine and illegal activities, known as the Iran-Contra Affair, which involved the complicity of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Saudi regime…

The Saudis agreed to fund anti-communist guerrillas in Afghanistan, Angola, and elsewhere, who were supported by the Reagan administration, including the Contras of Nicaragua…

The Reagan administration used proceeds from arms sales to Iran to fund the right-wing Contras, in an effort to overturn Nicaragua’s left-wing, but democratically elected, Sandanista government. Both actions were contrary to acts of Congress…

Initially, in order to side-step Congress, the U.S. approached Prince Bandar to solicit Saudi aid in funding the Contras. Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who was the grandson of Ibn Saud, was appointed Saudi ambassador to the U.S. in 1983….

After Hezbollah bombed American facilities in Beirut and kidnapped CIA station chief William Buckley, it was Casey and Bandar who agreed to assassinate Sheikh Fadlallah, the terrorist group’s leader. Control of the operation was handed to the Saudis, who turned to the services of an operative from Britain’s elite special forces. The plan backfired, however, when the car bomb took down an apartment building near Beirut, killing eighty innocent civilians. Fadlallah escaped unharmed. And, to cover their tracks, the Saudis provided Fadlallah with information identifying the operatives they had hired..

Bob Woodward asserted that Cheney and Rumsfeld informed Prince Bandar of the decision to invade Iraq before Defense Sec. Colin Powell. Woodward told CBS60 Minutes, “Saturday, Jan. 11 [2003], with the president’s permission, Cheney and Rumsfeld call Bandar to Cheney’s West Wing office, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Myers, is there with a top-secret map of the war plan. And it says, ‘Top secret. No foreign.’ No foreign means no foreigners are supposed to see this.” Defense Sec. Colin Powell was informed of the decision on Jan. 13th, 2003.

It did not take long for questions to arise regarding his indirect involvment in 9/11.

Prince Bandar’s wife was embroiled in bad press due to her donated money getting extremely close to a couple of the alleged hijackers. A late 2002 article from the Guardian explains:

The possibility of a Saudi intelligence link emerged just hours after widespread reports of bank cheques indirectly linking two of the hijackers to a bank account under the name of a Saudi princess, the wife of the kingdom’s ambassador to Washington.

The Saudi embassy angrily denied the suggestion, calling it “untrue and irresponsible”. A spokesman said there was no evidence that cheques from Princess Haifa bint Faisal’s Washington account went to the hijackers Nawaq al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar.

A FBI investigation leaked over the weekend traced regular monthly bank-certified cheques worth $3,500 (£2,200) from the princess’s account to a Saudi woman called Majida Dwaikat starting in early 2000, which was when Mrs Dwaikat’s husband, Osama Basnan, befriended al-Hazmi and al-Midhar in San Diego.

Incidentally, those are the two alleged hijackers from 9/11 that former counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke seems to think the CIA was hiding in order to “recruit” them for double agent work. An article from The Daily Beast in August, 2011 provides more details:

Read Craig Unger’s book “House of Bush, House of Saud” alongside Russ Baker’s new book “Family of Secrets” and you will see that implicating the Saudi Royals is essentialy going to lead to implicating the Bush family syndicate.

The story below revolves around a Saudi royal family living in Florida that may have had some connections to 11 of the alleged 19 hijackers. – Brian @ Nor Cal Truth

WhoWhatWhy has found evidence linking the Saudi royal family to Saudis in South Florida who reportedly had direct contact with the 9/11 hijackers before fleeing the United States just prior to the attacks. Our report connects some of the dots first laid out by investigative author Anthony Summers and Florida-based journalist Dan Christensen in articles jointly published in the Miami Herald and on the nonprofit news site BrowardBulldog.org.

In early September of this year, Summers and Christensen reported that a secret FBI probe, never shared with Congressional investigators or the presidential 9/11 commission, had uncovered information indicating the possibility of support for the hijackers from previously unknown confederates in the United States during 2001.

Now WhoWhatWhy reveals that those alleged confederates were closely tied to influential members of the Saudi ruling elite.

As reported in the Herald, phone records documented communication, dating back more than a year, that connected a Saudi family then living in a house near Sarasota, Florida, with the alleged plot leader, Mohammed Atta, and his hijack pilots—as well as to eleven of the other hijackers. In addition, records from the guard house at the gated community tied Atta’s vehicle and his accomplice Ziad Jarrah to actual visits to the house. Although requiring further investigation, this information suggests that the house may have functioned as an operational base for the hijackers.

According to interviews and records examined by The Herald, Anoud and Abdulazzi al-Hiijjii and their young twins abruptly departed their home in Sarasota only days before September 11, 2001 and traveled to Arlington, Virginia, where they stayed briefly at another house owned by Anoud’s father, Esam Ghazzawi.

President Obama appointed Philip Zelikow, associate dean for graduate academic programs in the University of Virginia’s Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, to serve on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, the White House announced Tuesday.